The Last Ever After by Soman Chainani
Now Stefan was carrying lumber to the mill. He paused on the path, noticing five-year-old Agatha playing alone in the weeds on a nearby hill. She looked up at Stefan and smiled toothily. Stefan smiled back.
“And yet, when he’d see the strange urchin girl that skulked around Graves Hill, he’d feel such affection towards her, even as the other mill workers noticed her striking resemblance to Vanessa,” said Professor Sader. “With two girls born to her, one ugly, one beautiful, Vanessa had kept the one she thought Stefan would love. The one who would bring her closer to him. But it was the one she threw away who imprinted herself on Stefan’s heart.”
Stefan’s scene disappeared and the girls were alone with Vanessa in her bathroom, filled with hundreds of beauty potions, creams, and elixirs, as she thickened her lips with a special paste, made her eyes green with herbal drops, and dyed her hair golden-blond with a homemade brew. Seven-year-old Sophie mimicked her mother, rubbing honeycream from a bottle into her own cheeks.
“Vanessa couldn’t understand why Stefan still seemed cold to her, even after Sophie’s birth. Was Sophie not pretty enough? she thought. Am I not good enough either? Panicked, Vanessa obsessively tried to make herself more beautiful. Her daughter too. But no matter what she did, Stefan seemed to shirk from the both of them.”
Sharply, the scene pivoted to Vanessa standing with young, ten-year-old Sophie at the kitchen window, each of them blond and gorgeous, watching Stefan playing with two young boys in Honora’s front yard. Vanessa no longer looked angry anymore. She looked defeated and heartbroken.
“Eventually, Vanessa died alone, while her true love abandoned her for a girl she once thought an ugly witch. She lived to see Honora have two children of her own. Two boys Vanessa knew were Stefan’s until the day she died, even if Honora pretended otherwise. She knew it from the way Stefan loved them. From the way Stefan held the boys at Honora’s husband’s funeral after he was killed in a mill accident. And from the way Stefan stared so distantly at Sophie, the daughter he had at home.”
As Stefan played with Honora’s children, he looked up and saw Agatha, hunched and gangly, stalking up Graves Hill. He smiled fondly.
“Yet Stefan never forgot about the girl in the graveyard, who he looked for whenever he passed by . . . because deep inside, she felt more like his child than any of them.”
The story washed away like a painting in the rain, and Sophie and Agatha were in vast, silent blackness, listening to the sound of their matching breaths.
“Two sisters,” said Sader’s voice. “But sisters in name only, for there was no love in their making. Two souls, forever irreconcilable, since each soul was a mirror of the other: one Good, one Evil. Indeed, if fate ever brought these girls together, they’d be mortal enemies, even as their hearts yearned to find a bond. There would be no path to happiness, just as there had been no path to happiness for their parents. They were old souls made new, doomed to hurt and betray one another again and again, like Stefan and Vanessa, until they too were torn apart forever. And for anyone to think these two girls could defy that ending and find an Ever After together . . . well, that would be a fairy tale, wouldn’t it?”
Slowly the Brig filled in around them and the two girls were in the frozen dungeon, their bodies slack, their faces ash white. Professor Sader floated in front of Vanessa’s tomb, gazing back at them.
“But I had hope, even if I couldn’t see what your ending was. Look at how far you’ve come already, against all odds. That’s why I moved your mother here, so you could see the truth about your story. That’s why I sacrificed my life for the both of you. Because by breaking all the rules of our world, you have the chance to save it when we need it most. To find a bridge between Good and Evil. To put love first, whether it’s a Boy’s or Girl’s. To shatter the chain between your parents’ Old story and your New one. No one knows if you will succeed, children. Even me. But the Storian chose you for a reason and it’s time to face it. No more running. No more hiding. The only way out is through your fairy tale.”
His hazel eyes sparkled with tears. “Now go and open the door.”
Professor Sader smiled at the two girls one last time. Then his phantom dissipated to darkness, like the last tears of a sun.
34
The War of All Things
Neither girl could look at the other. They just stared at Vanessa, dead and beautiful in her frozen grave.
“We’re sisters,” said Sophie, a strange flatness in her voice.
“But not,” said Agatha softly. “Family but not family. Blood but not blood. Together but apart.” She could feel a wave of emotions trapped behind her heart, too big and powerful to let in. “That’s why I saw Sader in my dreams like he was my father,” she rasped. “Because he always reminded me of your father. Somewhere, I knew I was Stefan’s daughter all along.”
Both of them were quiet, watching each other’s blurred reflection in the iced tomb.
“Sophie?” Agatha finally looked at her. “We have to go. We have to go right now.”
Sophie didn’t meet her eyes. Her muscles were tense, her entire body on edge.
“Did you hear me?” Agatha pressed. “We have to g—”
“It doesn’t change anything, Agatha,” said Sophie coldly, still staring at her mother.
“What? Sophie, it changes everything—”
“No,” she retorted. “It proves I was Evil from the start. That my mother was never Good and cursed me to relive her miserable little life, rotting away alone while you get a happy ending with Tedros the same way my father gets a happy ending with Honora. Good gets Good; Evil gets nothing. Except I have the chance to change my ending. Now, more than ever, Rafal is my only hope to not end up alone. To not end up like her.”
She shoved past Agatha and started jostling random tombs. “Bloody hell! There has to be another door somewhere.”
Agatha watched her, stunned. “Sophie, don’t you get it? Choosing Rafal only makes you more like her. Your mother did Evil in order to force love and look what happened! Choosing Rafal will only leave you more alone in the end—”
“Aggie, you’re acting like I care about your opinion,” Sophie spat, pounding on graves. “You heard what Sader said. There is no love between us. There is no bond. You’re Good. I’m Evil. And now we’ll see who makes it to The End first. Either Tedros gets you to Camelot or Rafal and I seal our Never After. Only one of us wins our fairy tale.”
“Sader also said he believed in us,” Agatha said, accosting her. “He died for us—”
“Just like my mother died knowing she’d never found love,” Sophie said, elbowing her away. “Evil souls don’t find love. First lesson at the School for Evil. Evil souls are meant to end up with no one.”
“I won’t let that happen to you,” Agatha fought back.
“Really? Because you, Tedros, and I will be a happy threesome? Because I’ll be your Evil little pet?” Sophie hissed, punching tombs. “Don’t you get it? My soul is broken! I’m messed up, sick in the head, rotten to the core! I’m damaged. I’ll never find the kind of love you did because I’ll never be happy inside. All these years, I wanted to be like the mother I thought I had—an angel of Good and light—and instead, I see I was always like her. Unlovable down to the pit of a bad, bad soul.”
“You aren’t her,” Agatha said, tailing behind. “Deep down, you’re nothing like her—”
“Are you deaf? Did you hear her story?” said Sophie, hitting tombs faster now. “I made friends with you so I could get a prince, just like my mother made friends with Honora to get my father. I tried every trick my mother did to find love—love spells, beauty potions, wishing on stars—only to end up hated and alone, while my best friend gets everything. And just like my mother, I’m going to end up dead in a frozen dungeon, with all these other cowards, who were too weak to accept they were Evil.”
She whirled to Agatha, splotched with rage. “So you better believe, if I get out of here, I’ll do anything it takes to keep my t
A high-pitched ping! rang through the Brig.
All the steel placards on the tombs lit up with blinking, bright blue arrows that pointed towards a glowing tomb, before its coffin door magically popped open.
Lady Lesso’s recorded voice blared from all sides: “The student exit has been opened. Kindly exit the dungeon with the rest of your class and return to school. The student exit has been opened. Kindly exit the dungeon with the rest of your class and return to school.”
Agatha gaped at the lit-up coffin.
“Now go and open the door.”
Sader’s last words. He must have put a charm on it to unlock once they’d gotten close enough—
Her thoughts broke off because Sophie was already sprinting towards the glowing grave.
“Sophie, wait!” Agatha said, racing after her. She couldn’t let her get to Rafal—
But Sophie was already thrusting herself into the empty coffin and shoving through a false snow wall at the back of the grave. Agatha tried to grab Sophie from behind, but Sophie flung her away and Agatha reeled off-balance. She recovered and lunged after Sophie through the wall, propelling into the freezing block of white.
As she came out the other side, Agatha shook the snowflakes out of her eyes and hair to see she was in a dark, leaky tunnel, sloping steeply uphill. Sophie was way ahead, almost to the door at the end. Agatha hurtled after her, hearing the echoes of Sophie’s stuttered breaths and rustling leather catsuit as she wrestled the handle. When it wouldn’t budge, Sophie threw her shoulder against it as hard as she could, before Agatha tackled her against the door, slamming it open with a tumultuous groan as both girls tumbled through—
Agatha’s head cracked hard against a stone floor. By the time she wobbled to her knees, eyes blearing open, Sophie was gone. Agatha lurched up to the big, empty room lit by a weak green torch. A room she’d been in before.
The Exhibition of Evil.
She hustled towards the museum’s exit, not wanting to let Sophie get too far ahead—
A sharp hiss slashed through the silence. Agatha froze on her heels.
Slowly she turned and spotted a small, dark shadow huddling on the floor beneath Sader’s last painting of Gavaldon.
“Reaper?”
The bald, mashed-up creature hissed at her again before it glared up at Sader’s painting with copper-yellow eyes.
Agatha rushed towards him and scooped him into her arms—
He bit her wrist and she dropped him with a yelp. Reaper turned back to Sader’s painting, his slit-like pupils locked on the scene.
All Agatha’s questions of how her cat had gotten into the school, where he’d been the past few weeks, or why he was in Evil’s museum fell away. Because right now, Reaper wanted her to look at the painting on the wall. As she leaned in towards the canvas, Agatha saw why.
The scene was different than it was before.
It was darker, with only a needlepoint of light left in the top corner. And where the shadows of villains once closed in on Gavaldon as the villagers burned storybooks in fear, now there were actual villains coming through the trees as they battled the young and old heroes back. The only thing separating the villains from Gavaldon was a thin, hole-riddled shield, about to break.
Agatha bolted straight. Once a vision of the future, Sader’s painting was now magically tracking the present. She was watching the war between Good and Evil as it unfolded . . . and Good was losing.
Urgently, her eyes scoured the scene for Tedros, but Sader had always painted with hazy, impressionistic brushstrokes, no detail to the faces at all.
I have to get to Sophie, she panicked.
But how? Sophie had too much of a head start—
Reaper meowed again, still fixed on the painting, as if whatever answers she was looking for were inside its frame.
What hadn’t she seen?
She put her nose closer to the canvas, her fingers running across the oily surface . . . until they stopped.
The empty anvil from which she’d drawn Excalibur was tucked beneath the canopy of Mr. Deauville’s book shop, far away from the action of the war.
Reaper growled, urging her on.
Of course, Agatha thought.
The School Master had enchanted the sword to hide it in Sader’s painting . . .
Which meant he had to enchant the anvil too.
And if he enchanted the anvil . . . then maybe . . .
Heart rattling, Agatha slowly slid her right hand through the tight, wet surface of the painting until she watched her fingers appear in the painting . . .
She felt the cold, hard metal of the real anvil under her palm.
Her hand wasn’t just inside the painting. Her hand was in Gavaldon.
A portal.
Reaper curled around her leg, ensuring he’d be along for the ride. Agatha smiled down sadly.
“Thanks for helping me, Reap,” she whispered, prying him off. “I’ll be back for you when it’s safe. I promise.”
As her cat whimpered, Agatha grabbed the anvil tighter and pulled herself headfirst into the painting. Her whole body was swallowed into hot, wet darkness, before her face poked through another tight, wet barrier and into cold night air. Still levitating horizontally, Agatha grabbed hold of the anvil with her second hand and yanked the rest of herself through the portal wall, the heel of her last clump popping out before she collapsed onto sooty cobblestones.
When Agatha raised her head, the first thing she saw was hordes of screaming villagers fleeing for cover. Trapped in the stampede, Agatha rolled like a log under Mr. Deauville’s awning, just missing being trampled, before she ducked behind the anvil. Peeking over it, she could see people of Gavaldon cramming into the church, shuttering themselves in shops, and chaining themselves in cottages. Once upon a time, she’d witnessed the same scenes as parents tried to protect their children from the School Master. Now, it wasn’t just the children they were hiding from him.
Agatha rose from behind the anvil, gazing out at the Woods, a half mile away.
It was exactly as she’d seen in Sader’s painting. Flames streaked through the distant trees, illuminating legions of zombie villains as they battled old heroes and students out of the Woods, backing them towards an invisible barrier that separated the forest from Gavaldon. From inside the town, Agatha couldn’t see the enchanted shield the way she’d seen it inside the Woods. She only knew it was there because an ogre slammed a stymph out of nearby trees, sending it whizzing into the shield and ricocheting to the ground, toppling the young rider on its spine.
Agatha squinted harder, trying to make out faces through the trees, but like Sader’s painting, all she saw was a blur of bodies and fire. Scared, Agatha searched for the sun, but couldn’t find it through the clouds of smoke.
How much time was left? Twenty minutes? Fifteen? Less?
All at once, it overwhelmed her. She’d never find Sophie in time. She’d never make her destroy that ring. She’d die here, useless and cowering, beneath a storybook shop. Panic ripped through her blood—
Don’t give up.
Cinderella’s voice echoed inside of her like a heartbeat.
For the both of us.
Air slowly came back into Agatha’s lungs. Her mentor was right. Either she helped her Good friends win this war . . .
Or she would die with them.
But first she had to get past that shield.
Steeling with determination, she sprinted towards the Woods. As she tore through town, she passed a father sending his wife and son up a ladder to hide in a chimney . . . a mother and daughter sealing themselves in a barrel . . . and one of the Elders, herding children into the schoolhouse, with Radley amongst them, balancing a fishbowl as he scooted inside. Agatha scanned the scattering villagers for Stefan or Honora, but there was no sign of either of them.
Hurtling past the mills and lake into grassy fields, Agatha started to hear the sickening roar of the war: clashing metal,
Skidding up to the shield, she reached out her fingers and felt the bubbly, invisible surface between the holes. Before the war, each fairy tale that Evil had rewritten in its favor had punctured holes in the shield over the Reader World, just as it had punctured holes in Readers’ faith in Good. But with Good’s greatest heroes still alive, none of these holes were big enough to let the shield fall yet, nor let Evil pass into their protected realm. Which left only one question . . .
How am I supposed to get through? Agatha thought, panicking.
Through the shield, she could see snatches of heroes past the trees, trying to hold the line against the Dark Army. If the villains pushed them back any farther, they’d have them cornered against the shield—
Suddenly, Agatha glimpsed a flash of golden hair and broad shoulders.
Tedros?
He was already gone.
There was no time to think about her prince. If she wanted to help him, she had to get through the shield and find Sophie.
Agatha refocused and reached a hand through a hole, probing its edges. Breaking barriers was a personal talent. She’d gotten through the one on Halfway Bay every time she’d tried; surely she could get through this one too. But there was no gatekeeper to fool, nor any way to get through holes this small or—